Pretoria - South Africa's economy contracted by 1.3 percent in the second quarter of 2015 after rising by 1.3 percent in the first three months of the year, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday.
This was the first quarter-on-quarter decline in Africa's most advanced economy since the first three months of 2014.
The economy expanded by 1.2 percent on an unadjusted year-on-year basis in the second quarter, compared with growth of 2.1 percent in the previous three months.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected quarter-on-quarter GDP expansion of 0.5 percent and a year-on-year increase of 2 percent.
REUTERS